Metrics question
Mobile signups are healthy, but D30 retention has plateaued on both iOS and Android. How would you diagnose whether the issue is onboarding, first-query success, habit formation, subscription friction, or cross-device continuation? Which funnel and cohort metrics would you inspect first, and what experiments would you run to improve retention?
- Perplexity
- Metrics
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests structured retention diagnosis across the funnel, from onboarding through habit formation, using cohort data to guide experiments.
How to approach it
- Start with funnel decomposition: activation rate, day 1 to day 7 retention, and day 7 to day 30 retention, to find where the drop concentrates.
- Check first query success rate, since a plateau in D30 retention often traces back to users not getting a good first answer.
- Segment by platform, iOS versus Android, and by acquisition source to see if the plateau is universal or concentrated in one cohort.
- Review subscription and paywall friction points if the plateau coincides with a trial ending or upgrade prompt timing.
- Check cross device continuation, since a user who starts on web and cannot pick up on mobile may look like churn.
- Run targeted experiments based on the biggest funnel drop, for example an onboarding tutorial test if activation is the bottleneck.
What a strong answer includes
- Decomposes retention into a funnel rather than treating D30 as one number, isolating exactly where the plateau happens.
- Names first query success rate as a specific leading indicator, since it is the clearest signal of whether onboarding actually delivered value.
- Checks cross device continuation explicitly, a factor easy to miss but common in query based products with multiple entry points.
Common mistakes
- Jumping straight to onboarding redesign without first confirming where in the funnel the plateau actually occurs.
- Treating iOS and Android as one cohort when the plateau might be platform specific.
Likely follow-up questions
- Which single metric would you watch daily to know if a fix is working?
- How would you separate a subscription friction problem from a genuine habit formation problem?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop